Thinking of natural spaces as spaces for creation and artistic experience is the main objective of The Defense of Nature. A project developed by BoCA since 2021, it brings together local communities and artists, calling on them to contribute to a forest of works of art.
After putting down roots in Faro, Almada and Lisbon, in 2024 it returned to the capital and arrived in northern Portugal, in partnership with the municipalities of Braga.
At Monte do Picoto, a group of 100 students and other citizens from Braga turned up to plant 300 trees and shrubs in what was already the largest urban park of native forest in the country.
Following Joseph Beuys’ idea that anyone can be an artist, the art of generating life is realized in the ecological gesture of planting a tree. In these plantings, each person is invited to give their tree a title, treating it as an artistic creation.
ON DEFENDING NATURE
A ten-year participatory project through which BoCA combines artistic creation and programming with the planting of trees in natural spaces. Created in 2021, “The Defense of Nature” comprises: on the one hand, planting native plant species in different municipalities across the country to build a “forest of works of art”; on the other, inviting artists from different artistic territories to create performances in natural spaces through the cycle “I Want to See My Mountains”.
Based on the legacy of “7,000 oaks” by Joseph Beuys, a key figure in ecological art, BoCA is designing a sustainable plantation involving the collaboration of artists and the local population. Creating a direct correspondence between generating life (natural) and generating life (artistic), each plantation thus establishes an integrated thought that unifies the natural and the artistic, in a combination of art and environment, biodiversity and sustainability.
